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If you want to find the happiness quotations I've sent in the Moment of Happiness email, look here; to see the ones I've posted on the blog, look here. (To get the happiness quotations by email, send me an email request here.)

If you want to find the "Assays," which is what I call the posts that I think are most interesting, look here.

Remember, you can always search by "category" in the Archives box in the right rail.

This week’s video story: Do what you love, and then your friends hire you.

Perhaps I didn’t quite complete my thought on the video. When you do what you love, even in a non-job context, you make friends with other people who share your interests; as they move forward in the world, they help you move forward. (Of course, it’s not always easy to cultivate your passions.)

Find the archives of videos here. Almost 1.8 MILLION views. Don’t forget to subscribe.

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Yikes! Holidays are approaching! If you want free, signed, personalized bookplates for Happier at Home or The Happiness Project, or both, request them here. But hurry, because I can be kind of slow. (Ask for as many as you like, but alas, I can send only to U.S. and Canada.) You can also request signature cards with the Paradoxes of Happiness or Tips for Happiness in Your New Homethere.

I can’t resist adding a bit of what he wrote about photographing peppers:

“It is a classic, completely satisfying,–a pepper—but more than a pepper: abstract, in that it is completely outside subject matter. It has no psychological attributes, no human emotions are aroused: this new pepper takes on beyond the world we know in the conscious mind.

To be sure, much of my work has this quality,–many of my last year’s peppers, but this one, and in fact all the new ones, take one into an inner reality,–the absolute,–with a clear understanding, a mystic revealment.” — Daybooks, August 8, 1931

Sidenote: It’s surprising to me how many great visual artists are also great writers.

How about you? Do you have to remind yourself to “Be Gretchen” (substitute your own name) and to do what you’re best suited for? Self-knowledge! Always, it comes back to self-knowledge.

Has this ever happened to you? Something that you know is probably an inconvenience for most people is actually extremely helpful for you? Unfortunately, it’s so easy to notice when the opposite happens, and a change is super-inconvenient; I remind myself of this story to help boost my attitude.

Find the archives of videos here. Almost 1.8 MILLION views. Don’t forget to subscribe.

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I was very excited to read about the Nevada Happiness Project. Happiness projects for everyone! (Also, as a big fan of the TV show Parks and Recreation, I got a big kick out of the fact that this program is being run by the Parks and Rec department.)

Speaking of Happiness Project groups -- if, like Nevada's Parks and Recreation department, you're interested in launching a group for people doing happiness projects together, email me, and I'll send you the "starter kit." Read more here.

This week’s video story: “Well, them stories just gone and shown you how some folks would do.”

This is the quotation I’m talking about, from Flannery O’Connor’s essay “Writing Short Stories,” in Mystery and Manners:

I lent some stories to a country lady who lives down the road from me, and when she returned them, she said, “Well, them stories just gone and shown you how some folks would do,” and I thought to myself that that was right; when you write stories, you have to be content to start exactly there—showing how some specific folks will do, will do in spite of everything.

I’ve tried to explain why this passage has such power for me, but I’m not confident that I actually understand why these lines have haunted me for so long.

Do you have a quotation that sticks with you? That runs through your head, over and over?

Find the archives of videos here. Almost 1.8 MILLION views. Don’t forget to subscribe.

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Are you reading Happier at Home or The Happiness Project in a book group?Email me if you'd like the one-page discussion guide. Or if you're reading it in a spirituality book club, a Bible study group, or the like, email me for the spirituality one-page discussion guide. And if you'd like to join my book club (each month, I pick one book about happiness, one work of children's literature, one eccentric pick), sign up here. As you might guess, Flannery O'Connor was one of my first choices.

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Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin
is one of the most thought-provoking and influential writers on habits and happiness. Her next book, Better than Before, is about how we change our habits. Her books The Happiness Project and Happier at Home were both instant New York Times bestsellers, and The Happiness Project spent more than two years on the bestseller list, including at #1. Her books have sold more than two million copies, in 30 languages. Here, she writes about her adventures as she test-drives ideas from contemporary science and ancient wisdom about building good habits and a happier life.

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In just 21 days, you really can take steps to make your life happier—without spending a lot of time, energy, or money. I’ve created four premium 21 Day Happiness Projects for you to follow, if you want to tackle one of these common happiness challenges. Or buy the Omnibus, to get them all.